Four people from the slaughterhouse at the center of a massive beef recall in February have been indicted for purposely allowing diseased cattle into its processed meat and misleading health inspectors.

Federal prosecutors on Monday this week claimed the owners of
Rancho Feeding Corp., a Northern California beef processing
plant, schemed with employees to butcher about 79 cows with skin
cancer of the eye rather than stopping plant operations during
inspector lunch breaks. The government also said that plant
workers swapped the heads of diseased cattle with heads of
healthy cows to hide them from inspectors.

The company’s co-owners, Jesse Amaral, Jr. and Robert Singleton,
were indicted, along with yardman Eugene Corda and foreman Felix
Cabrera. Amaral and the two employees were charged with 11 felony
counts, including distribution of adulterated and misbranded
meat, mail fraud and conspiracy. Singleton was charged with only
one count of distributing adulterated, misbranded and uninspected
meat.

Amaral pleaded not guilty during a Monday morning hearing and was
released on $50,000 bail; the status of Cabrera and Corda is
still pending. Singleton is expected to plead guilty and
cooperate with the US Attorney’s Office in the prosecution of the
other three defendants, KQED reported.

In February, Rancho recalled over 8.7 million pounds of beef
products because it used "diseased and unsound animals,"
the US Department of Agriculture said in a
statement. The beef, which also lacked proper federal
inspections, was produced between January 1 and January 7 and was
unfit for human consumption. The meat was shipped to California,
Florida, Illinois and Texas, the department’s Food Safety and
Inspection Service said at the time. Despite the massive size of
the recall, the indictment only focused on 180 head of cattle.

It’s rare for a recall to lead to a federal indictment, Bill
Marler, a food safety attorney, told
KQED.

“There are very few criminal prosecutions generally in food
cases, and there are very few and far between in meat
cases,” Marler said. “They’re facing some severe jail
time and some severe fines.”

Between mid to late 2012 and 2014, Rancho processed and
distributed meat that had not passed USDA inspections, including
about 101 condemned cattle and 79 cancerous cattle from January
2013 and January 2014. Rancho paid Cabrera $50 for each condemned
carcass that was distributed, the
indictment said.

According to the charging documents, Singleton purchased some
cattle that showed signs of epithelioma ‒ lumps or other
abnormalities around the eye ‒ that made them less expensive than
animals that appeared healthy. Amaral then directed employees to
process cattle that had failed an inspection by a USDA
veterinarian and stamped with “USDA Condemned.” Cabrera
then directed employees to carve the stamp out of the cattle
carcasses and to treat the meat the same as if it had passed
inspection, the indictment alleged.

The two owners also directed Corda and Cabrera get around
inspection procedures for cattle with eye cancer by swapping the
diseased cows for cattle that had already passed inspection and
were awaiting slaughter, the indictment said. Cabrera or other
employees ‒ at his instruction ‒ “placed heads from
apparently healthy cows, which had previously been reserved, next
to the cancer eye cow carcasses. This switch and slaughter of
uninspected cancer eye cows occurred during the inspectors’ lunch
breaks, a time during which plant operations were supposed to
cease,” prosecutors claimed.

The swapped meat was then distributed, and Amaral mailed out 17
fraudulent invoices for the cattle to the farmers the animals
were purchased from. “Specifically, [Amaral] falsely advised
farmers that their cattle had died or been condemned, knowing
that the cattle had in fact been sold for human
consumption,” according to the court documents. He and other
employees at his instruction then created invoices to charge the
farmers handling fees for disposal of the carcasses, instead of
compensating them based on the sale price.

The four men face up to three years in jail and $250,000 for each
felony charge, according to KQED. There could also be lawsuits
stemming from the recall, though Marler doesn’t believe there
will be any money left over after the fines to pay the affected
farmers. One California rancher, Bill Niman, said he lost
$400,000 when he had to dispose of 30 tons of grass-fed meat he
was blocked from selling after the contaminated meat came to
light in February.

There have been no reports of illnesses linked to the products,
the Associated Press reported. More than 1,600 food distributors
in the United States and Canada were alerted to the recall that
asked consumers to return products, including beef jerky,
taquitos, hamburger patties and Hot Pockets frozen sandwiches.

Rancho stopped operations after the recalls. In March, the USDA
allowed another Northern California company, Marin Sun Farms, to
take over the shuttered slaughterhouse.